If you're not seeing pictures on this site, it's because it's not really working yet.

If you've posted comments and no one seems to respond -- that's because most users can't see them. Comments from the real site get posted here, but comments from here don't show up on the real site.

Basically, you should come to the real site. It looks a little crappy right now and it breaks down a lot, but this one isn't quite ready yet.

Sorry.. should have put up this notice long ago.

Note from Pixy: Posts and comments automatically sync from the old site to this new site within 60 seconds, but some authors aren't set up on the new site, and will show up as Open Blogger. We'll get those sorted out soon.

Twitter: We Don't Shadowban-Shadowban. We Only Shadowban.— Open Blogger

They admit to blocking tweets from people's timelines -- even though those people signed up to be a follower of that account, meaning they want to see those tweets.

They claim that this just makes it a "little harder" to see those tweets.

Try a lot harder -- the whole point of following someone is to get their tweets to show up in your timeline, for convenience. Yes, you could just go to their account and read their tweets. But that defeats the whole point of following someone -- following makes the appearance of those tweets automatic from your own home account.

They're doing this, they say, to "reduce complaints," but how can someone who signs up specifically to follow an account have a complaint about seeing the tweets they signed up to see in their timeline?

The truth is, leftist complained about certain accounts and they don't want people who want to read those accounts to be able to read those accounts.

I have a lot of followers, 60,000+, people who specifically chose to follow me. How does blocking my tweets from their accounts help the leftists who are not following me "avoid harm"?

They already are avoiding harm -- most leftist have block-lists that block tens of thousands of people. They don't see my tweets already.

They just don't think anyone else should, either.

And twitter agrees.

And yet Twitter continues to falsely advertise itself as a neutral forum dedicated to the principles of free speech.

They say they've reduced complaints in this way. Sure-- given that leftists are the ones constantly complaining and reporting people to Twitter, for the precise reason to get those people banned (or shadowbanned), then yes, doing what the leftist censors want you to do would "reduce complaints."

At least from the left -- the only people who count.

We on the right are complaining ourselves, but our complaints don't count. Witness this disgraceful double-talk that offends even Glenn Greenwald.

This is a bizarre and incredibly disingenuous statement from @Twitter. What's the point of following someone if Twitter blocks their tweets from appearing in your time-line? Maybe that's not technically "shadow-banning" but it's heavy-handed manipulation https://t.co/OaHf6qQplFpic.twitter.com/QzyJSajY5S

The more I think about this new @Twitter explanation, the more obnoxious it becomes. I decide to follow someone to see their tweets in my time-line. Twitter (silently) decides for me it's best if I don't see them, unless I go to their page (making the following feature pointless)

VP Mike Pence Receives Remains of Korean War Dead in Hawaii— Open Blogger

The North Koreans do seem to be attempting a show of respect, if not the genuine article.

.@POTUS asked that I travel to Hawaii to receive the remains of our US service members who fell in the Korean War. As the son of a Korean War combat veteran, its deeply humbling to be part of this historic moment. Well never forget the sacrifices of these brave service members. pic.twitter.com/Lmddn0C4GS

And now? The media itself routinely calls the current democratically elected president a "traitor."

Also note: In this clip, Chris Matthews and Chuck Todd note that it is Barack Obama who has broken tradition by referring to his critics by name, and they're... okay with that. Kind of psyched about it.

Flash forward to today, when Trump referring to critics by name (or simply by network) is considered an Authoritarian Assault on Cherished Privileges of the Press.

CHRIS MATTHEWS, HOST: OK, let's go to the politics pure and simple here, Chuck. Here's the president -- I want you to respond to this. Here he is with Harry Smith this morning on CBS "Morning News" going over his enemies list, basically. I've never seen a president -- well, not since Nixon fought with Dan Rather have we really seen kind of rivalry where the president cites by names his critics. And they are his critics, in all fairness. Let's listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HARRY SMITH, CBS NEWS: Are you aware of the level of enmity that crosses the airwaves and that people have made part of their daily conversation about you?

OBAMA: Well, I mean, I think that when you listen to Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck...

SMITH: It's beyond that.

OBAMA: ... it's pretty apparent, and it's troublesome.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

Criticism is "troublesome," per the former president. Media criticism is "troublesome."

MATTHEWS: Well, we've got the response to that. Here's -- here's -- you know, this guy is no frail flower, if you will. He doesn't hide. Here`s what Rush Limbaugh said to "The D.C. Examiner" today. Quote, "Never in my life have I seen a regime like this, governing against the will of the people purposely -- purposely. I have never seen the media so supportive of a regime amassing so much power, and I`ve never known so many people who literally fear for the future."

This is to me -- I`ll just give you a little editorial (INAUDIBLE) I've never seen language like this in the American press, referring to an elected representative government, elected in a totally fair, democratic, American election -- we will have another one in November, we'll have another one for president in a couple years -- fair, free, and wonderful democracy we have in this country.

And this guy, this walrus underwater, makes fun of this administration, calling it a "regime." We know that word, "regime." It was used by recent presidents (INAUDIBLE) by George Bush, "regime change." You go to war with regimes. Regimes are tyrannies. They're juntas. They're military coups. The use of the word "regime" in American political parlance is unacceptable, and someone should tell the walrus to stop using it.

Your thoughts, Chuck.

The press routinely intimates that Trump is a tyrant and is running a junta today. And yet in 2010, it was a sacrilege to even use a word that maybe suggests that.

TODD: Are we seeing more of this out there, or does more -- do the -- or does this get more attention? I mean, if you go back in history, whether it was FDR, whether it was Kennedy, whether it was Reagan, you know, there's been plenty of this, you know, overhyped attacks either from the left or the right...

MATTHEWS: I never heard the word "regime"...

TODD: ... in going after a president...

MATTHEWS: ... before, have you?

TODD: No, the point is, it's out there. It just didn't get the attention. And the question is, does this stuff just have more of a platform than it ever has before? But I want to get to another point on this, Chris...

MATTHEWS: You mean the John Birch Society now has a voice of radio, is what you're saying. I mean, we`re now hearing...

TODD: That's the point...

MATTHEWS: ... the kind of language...

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: ... used to hear when those right-wingers would call Eisenhower a communist and his brother a communist, the Johns Hopkins -- all of a sudden...

TODD: Or FDR.

MATTHEWS: ... that kind of loony-toon talk...

TODD: Or Father Coughlin.

MATTHEWS: ... has found its way onto the airwaves -- Father Coughlin.

(CROSSTALK)

TODD: ... beyond AM radio anymore, Chris.

MATTHEWS: I don't even think Joe McCarthy ever called this government a "regime."

TODD: But let me get to this other point about the president, which is -- I thought you pointed out something very interesting at the beginning, how he calls out his media enemies, essentially, like Nixon.

MATTHEWS: Yes.

TODD: Unlike a lot of presidents, this president brings this issue with the media up constantly, to the point of where, you know, on one hand, you could look at it and said, Jeez, he's being a little thin-skinned. On the other hand, he's clearly trying to send a message of his frustration, I think, with the way that the collective media -- and when he`s talking there, he's not just talking about journalists...

Per Chuck Todd, it's okay for Obama to call out his enemies list in the press by name because he's "frustrated" and "trying to send a message."

What message? When Trump calls out his enemies by name, it's claimed he's trying to "silence" them through "fear." Is that the message La Precious was trying to send in 2010? If not, what?

MATTHEWS: Yes.

TODD: ... he's talking about opinion media -- that the entire noise that he sees here in Washington -- and so you wonder how much of it -- you know, is he bringing more attention to it than it deserves, as well?

Chuck Todd's point in that babble is "What Obama did was okay because he wasn't calling out journalists, but "Opinion Media."

But the entire media is now opinion media, masquerading as neutral reporters.

So it should be likewise okay for Trump to call out the Opinion Media too, right?

This seems pretty tame compared to the other hits, but we'll have to wait for the details.

The allegations are said in part to involve instances of unwanted kissing and touching that occurred more than 20 years ago, as well as numerous claims that occurred more recently.

There's a difference between an unwanted French kiss, like Democrat Al Franken forced on an actress who had already said "No," and a peck; the latter may be unwanted and make someone feel gross, but it's not really an "assault." Well technically it is but most wouldn't call it that.

It could be that this is being leaked by Les Moonves' team to both get ahead of the story and to try to make it seem less than what it is, which would explain why the early details ("unwanted kissing," "twenty years ago") seem like such a small thing.

We'll have to see what is actually being claimed in the article, and whether those claimants seem credible.

t Anthony Chan breaks down the second-quarter GDP and the outlook for the U.S. economy.
U.S. gross domestic product advanced by 4.1% in the second quarter, the fastest pace of economic expansion since 2014  when third-quarter growth reached 5.2%.

Continue Reading Below

After the GDP report was released President Trump tweeted, "Great GDP numbers just released." In a press conference at the White House Trump said annual GDP growth "will be over 3%."

The Trump administration has implemented pro-growth policies, including a sweeping tax reform package meant to bolster businesses. The last time annual GDP growth was above 3% was in 2005 when it came in at 3.3%. George W. Bush was president when the U.S. economy hit this growth rate. The best annual GDP reading under President Barack Obama was 2.9%.

Good morning kids. Here comes the weekend so let's get right to it. Full disclosure, I got a late start this morning but the Marginal Thinking Department in the parentheticals should fill in some of the blanks. Mueller Witch Hunt category tops the news where as expected stooge-shill-schmuck Paul Ryno threw cold water on any attempt to impeach Rod Rosenstench. Despite the fact that at minimum his appointing of Robert Mueller to head this investigation when he, Rosenrimmer, was the one who okay'd the FISA warrant on Carter Page knowing it was a sham, is grounds to recuse oneself, Ryno declared with absolute certainty that his behavior was nowhere near rising to the level of an impeachable offense. In my own words, go fuck yourself.

All that said, there are a number of pundits who are stating that going ahead with an attempt to oust the Arnold Stand-looking crook is politically dangerous, and I believe even Mark Meadows who was one of the leaders of the effort is backing away. But Mark Levin among others gives his full-throated argument in favor. Meh, the beat goes on and with absolutely nothing of any substance to nail PDT or his associates with vis a vis the original accusation of colluding with Russia to "interfere" (and that word there is pregnant with meaning) with the 2016 election, Mewler is going after the President for his Tweets. Yes, gentle reader, his Tweets. Communications that are public and broadcast to millions of people in the open. Unless any of them contained the phrase "John has a long mustache" or "verwundte mein herz mit eintonige matischkeit" this is all just yet another in a long line of "squirrel!" deflections and illusions. In somewhat related news, the Tweet strategy is now being used by the Left to go after the President's new policy of adding the citizenship question to the 2020 Census, claiming that his crowing about it somehow proves racism or some such piffle, and naturally an Obama-appointed black-robed hack is allowing the suit to go forward. And this is the same crap that was used to derail the travel ban.

They've got nothing, they never had anything and they will never have anything with which to legally and legitimately remove this President from office. But of course, the beat goes on. As I have stated numerous times here or in the comments on other threads, Donald Trump could win reelection in 2020, help the GOP win all 100 seats in the Senate, all 500+ in the House, push the Dow over 40,000, reunite Korea, liberate Iran, cure cancer, walk on water and pay off the national debt and it will mean nothing to these people. He will be hounded for the rest of his life, and then they will try to destroy his kids, grandkids, great-grandkids, wipe out his business empire and whatever legacy he leaves behind as retribution for stealing their thunder and making them look like fools for all the world to see. The other reason is as a warning against anyone who thinks they can do what he did and go against the Deep State elitist-globalist enterprise.

'Nuff said on that score. I will not deal with Michael Cohen as it is a distraction and nothing-burger. Meanwhile, in news about real criminality, amorality and miscellaneous meshugas, Rand Paul is gunning for John Brennan, Joey Bidet's niece gets let off the hook on a felony conviction, and yes Russia has always meddled in our affairs, many times with the willing participation of Dems and Leftists.

On to politics where Jim Jordan, one of the few decent people in Congress, has announced his bid for Speaker of the House. Tough row to hoe considering the Coup-Cucks-Clan RINOs. Loopy Ocasio-Fiasco continues to spew ahistorical bilge as the old-guard Dems do their best to distance themselves from Socialist taint (figurative and otherwise), big mega-donors have raised some big bucks for what they think are competitive races, Scott Walker's not polling well in his bid for a third term as Wisconsin's Big Cheese (yeah, polls, but still), Grandma grand mal Palsi's dentures are not cooperating with hilarious results (yet again), and as we near the midterms, with their party in open revolt with itself, they seem leaderless and adrift, crazy-eyed cuchi-cuchi girls from the block notwithstanding.

On to Amnesty, where the GOP-e's new asylum rules are a big f-you to we the people, the Feds are nabbing illegals in fake ID and bennies scams and despite the Marxist pedigree, Mexico's president-elect is seemingly going to try and stop the flow of his citizenry over our border. Trump effect, I'd wager.

On the international scene, the NorK's have returned the remains of US soldiers from the Korean War, although the US minister was released from prison to house arrest, Erdogan is mouthing off at PDT (a big mistake, pal), reporters for Aussie ABC are saying that the US is planning airstrikes against Iran's nuke facilities (neither confirmed nor denied as of this writing by the White House), the State Department is sabotaging Congressional efforts to go after Islamo-fascists who use human shields, just like the Palestinians did in setting up a sniper ambush against Israeli soldiers near Gaza, and Billy Carter's stupid brother opened his cake-hole and halitosis emerged.

Domestically, the NY Slimes and AP are now digging up dirt on Brett Kavanaugh's wife, the EPA is now going to reverse course and enforce an Obama-era regulation on truckers, taxes on cigarettes, junk food and soda leaves the poor hardest hit ("For the People!"), and the Illinois pension crisis is going to affect other blue shit-hole states which will in turn cause them to do what they did and effectively destroy their housing market to pay it off. Get out now, people.

From hither and yon, the NY Times claims the Toronto shooter had nothing to do with ISIS despite all the evidence and ISIS taking credit, Jonathan Chait goes against the Body and gets blasted, Daniel Greenfield with another great essay on how we are all politicians now, and Bruce Thornton at Frontpage Mag echoing how we all feel about taking the rhetorical gloves off and going after the Left with a dose of their own medicine. Concur on that one.

Anyway, links from around the world, across the nation and up your street. Have a better one and remain blessed.

July 26, 2018

Short and Sweet ONT— Open Blogger

Short one tonight, kiddies. I've been out of town all week in Ft. Worth. I think I'm in love with that town. While there are a few modern glass skyscrapers, and one Brutalist monstrosity that should be imploded, the entire downtown is all Art Deco. How cool is that?

Anyhow, I got back this afternoon, and spent the time since then replacing the hot water heater in the RV. (Easy job. Piece of cake. I could do it in 10 minutes if everything was out in the open. Since it's not, and since it was a cast iron bitch to get all of the screws that were holding the old one in out, I just finished and realized, hey, after 9:00, ONT. So, sorry) Anyhow, I noticed that begun, the fast food wars have.

July 26, 2018

A Russian accused in Fusion GPS' "dossier" of being a RUSSIAN SPY is suing Buzzfeed for defamation, as they published the unvetted piece of shit.

He's served Fusion GPS with interrogatories about how they "crafted" this piece of shit.

The judge has ordered: Yes, you must answer these questions.

Ungaro [the judge in the case] ruled that attorneys for the executive, Aleksej Gubarev, can ask Fusion GPS representatives in a deposition about the firms dossier clients, its efforts to verify the dossier, its decision to hire dossier author Christopher Steele and its interactions with government officials and media outlets, including BuzzFeed.

...

Ungaro largely rejected Fusion's First Amendment objection, saying the firm's business relationships with its clients "are not protected from disclosure by the First Amendment even though the opposition research it conducts on behalf of clients may be political in nature."

"This ruling gave us everything that we had hoped for," Evan Fray-Witzer, a lawyer for Gubarev, told The Daily Caller News Foundation.

"After a year of trying everything they could think of to avoid being deposed, Fusion is finally going to have to sit down and answer our questions," he added.

In a talk about the economy going on right now, Trump said that some had predicted 5.3% growth -- not 5.2% as one analyst predicted, but 5.3%.

Maybe sensing that he was setting himself up in a no-win situation by setting the bar so high, he then said he'd be happy with anything with a "4" in front of it. Then he said something with a 3 in front of it would be "okay" (he said this with a slight grimace), so long as the 3 was followed by a 7, 8, or 9.

He then said that these numbers were "unthinkable," and said that if he had talked about such numbers during the campaign, the media would have said he was "exaggerating."

I actually have a memory of him talking about 4+% growth during the campaign, and I bet the media did in fact laugh at this as pie-in-the-sky, but it doesn't seem important enough to do a bunch of searches to confirm.

PS, it was probably Obstruction of Justice for Trump to talk up a range of numbers from 3.7% to 5.3%.

Facebook Inc Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg's fortune is set to take a $16 billion hit on Thursday, as the social media giant braces for the biggest one-day wipeout in U.S. stock market history, a day after its executives forecast years of lower profit margins.

At least 16 brokerages cut their price targets on Facebook after executives said the cost of improving privacy safeguards, as well as slowing usage in the biggest advertising markets, would hit the company's profit margins for more than two years.

Facebook shares were down 20.4 percent at $173.20 in premarket trading, a decline that would wipe about $128 billion off the companys value -- or nearly four times the entire market capitalization of Twitter Inc.

Reuters adds a fun fact-- if you treated the $16+ billion Zuckerberg is set to personally lose as someone's own personal wealth, that person would be the 80th richest person in the world. In other words, Zuckerberg just lost the net worth of the 80th richest person in the world.

The Daily Mail, which is here, put it another way: Facebook's one day loss is about equal to the total net capitalization of McDonald's, or Nike.

Specifically, rather than forcing users to opt out of having their preferences, location, age, etc., packaged up to be sold to advertisers, FaceBook will ask users to opt in to this system.

Industry experts had predicted, ahead of the announcement, that the number of active users visiting the social network would either drop or flat line.

According to analysts, stalling numbers are likely the result of forcing Facebook users to consciously opt-in to having their information used for personal advertising - one of the key stipulations of the stringent GDPR [General Data Protection Regulation] rules.

GDPR, which came into affect May 25, stipulates that companies must explicitly request consent from their users in order to personal data for advertising purposes. Companies that do not comply with GDPR can be fined up to four per cent of their global revenue.

Apparently the GDPR is a rule enacted by the EU. Does it apply to Americans, then? Not sure. It ought to. But I don't know.

This is scary:

To comply with the new regulations, Facebook rolled-out a security check-up to users worldwide which asked them to review what kind of personal information they consent to sharing for advertising targeting. Users were also asked to consent to facial recognition technology on the site.

Analysts believe users may have been scared off by the explicit details about how their data is being used by the social network.

Yeah, it's one thing to say "We got consent!!!" But real consent depends on you accurately and fully warning users what they're agreeing to. Apparently when you do fully apprise people of how you intend to use their information, they're not so willing to give that consent.

Some shareholders are looking to kick Zuckerberg out of power.

The company, who has about $11 million in Facebook stock, wants to break up Zuckerberg's role as both chairman and CEO, Business Insider reports.

The proposal argues that shareholders are unable to check Zuckerberg's power given he holds roughly 60 percent of Facebook's voting shares as both chair and CEO.

Meanwhile, reporters know the real reason for FaceBook's decline -- it permits users to watch FoxNews clips on the platform.

What is shadowbanning? It's a method of limiting someone's reach without explicitly banning them. The most complained-of technique has been called "throttling," where Twitter only displays the shadowbanned account to the followers he interacts with the most, and hides them from all other people.

Because Twitter allows what could be called the accounts "closest followers" to see the tweets, the shadowbanned person will get responses of "Yeah, I can see your tweets" from those persons if he asks about it, and will thus doubt he's been shadowbanned.

But he has been. Because it's only that handful of accounts who saw his question about being shadowbanned.

I was personally shadowbanned; people who followed my account told me they could not see my tweets unless they specifically entered my timeline URL and just searched my timeline. That is, they could see my tweets when they searched my timeline, but Twitter didn't put my tweets into their timeline, even though they had specifically told Twitter they wanted to see my tweets in their timeline by "following" my account.

I could see the net effect of this on my retweets. Having used twitter for a while, I knew how many retweets I could expect for certain kinds of tweets, on average.

For a tweet that didn't break any new ground, but was a pithy or pungent restatement of something most conservatives believed, I could expect 40-100 retweets or so. This sort of tweet wasn't very novel or interesting, but people like retweeting things they agree with -- it saves them the trouble of writing it themselves. It's an easy way to transmit an idea you agree with. No, the thing you're retransmitting isn't all that earth-shaking, but people like spreading ideas or beliefs they agree with.

For a tweet that was actually interesting, or about breaking news and relatively fresh to the news, or was funny, etc., I had grown accustomed to seeing 300-500 retweets, or sometimes even 1000+.

Sometime in February or March of this year, as Twitter began it's new "health" initiative -- protecting people's "health" by shadowbanning people so that special snowflakes wouldn't be "harmed" by seeing them -- suddenly the number of retweets for a type one tweet -- not novel, but a decent restatement of a belief widely shared by conservatives -- dropped from 40-100 to something like five to twelve, and the number of retweets for a more interesting tweet dropped from 300-500 or more to 20 or 30.

Before you say, "Hey, that could have been NeverTrumpers just blocking or unfollowing you," well, no, this began in February or March of this year. The purging from NeverTrump follow lists had happened long before.

The other type of shadowbanning is removing rightwing accounts that Twitter doesn't like from its inventory of commonly-searched for account names. So, for example, if you're a liberal and you're searching for Tommy Vietor, if you write "Vie-" in the search box "Tommy Vietor" and his account name will appear immediately below, saving you the difficulty of having to remember his account's actual name. And bear in mind, many people's account names are not obvious. I think David French's account is like @DavidAFrench, either because he's egotistical or @DavidFrench was already taken by another David French.

This is another technique by twitter to limit people's ability to find right-wing accounts. It's also the technique that VICE was reporting on, specifically. (Though I know from persona experience that "Throttling" or partial-banning is a real tactic of twitter as well.)

Twitter claims that this is just a "bug" in their system. They're lying, as usual. What they're doing, per Jim Hanson (tweets below), is using blocklists -- which are nigh-exclusively used by liberals, blocking hundreds and thousands of accounts with a single command -- as an important (or the only) determinant as to whether an account is "harmful."

"Harmful" accounts will then be shadowbanned by a process called "QFD." I don't know what that stands for. Update: Now I do. It stands for "Quality Filter Discrimination."

So if a lot of liberals put you on to their blocklist -- and almost all liberals use blocklists -- then you are deemed a low-quality account and shadowbanned for not rising to Twitter's famous level of quality.

This is just Twitter making a leftwing political decision while pretending they're applying a rule evenhandedly. It's like them hiring Anita Sarkesian, a rabid left-wing censor, as a judge in deciding which accounts are "harmful." They can say they didn't make this decision themselves, but instead deferred to their expert outside judge Anita Sarkesian -- but then, they selected Sarkesian for that post, and they knew, obviously, what kinds of accounts she would find "harmful."

Spoiler alert: Some of the accounts banned after Sarkesian joined the Health and Safety Council were, get this, critical of Anita Sarkesian.

Twitter knows that liberals are block-list crazy and conservatives, maybe as a point of pride, do not use them, so by letting the number of block-lists deployed against an account determine if it's too low quality an account to appear on Twitter, Twitter knew damn well they were once again letting left-wingers determine who could post on Twitter, while pretending these decisions are being made simply by an "algorithm" having absolutely no political bias to it.

By the way, Jim Hanson says that Twitter is "fixing" what they have called a "bug." But Hanson says they're not really "fixing" it -- all they're doing is removing the highest-profile conservative accounts from this QFD low-quality shadowban, in hopes that the high-profile conservatives now declared High Enough Quality for Twitter will stop squawking about it and let Twitter go on its merry way of shadowbanning not-quite-so-high-profile accounts:

As I suspected Twitter just fixed things for really high profile accounts

Their Quality Filter problem still exists for the great majority of conservativesTwitter should stop the use of mass banning listsThe Left uses these to damage conservative acct "quality"ratings pic.twitter.com/hgLjqu6bMg

Unfortunately, the highest-profile Republicans tend to be a very selfish and mercenary crew, concerned about their own speech rights, or those of their close allies, and quite willing to permit the liberals to quash the speech of other conservatives -- to let progressives do the censorship against the neocon/NeverTrumper's enemies -- so I think Twitter will probably get away with this.

All twitter has to do is remove this shadowban from the Ben Shapiro and David French types' accounts, while leaving them on everyone else's account, and the Ben Shapiro and David French types will never say a damn word again about it.

So the only real solution, I think, is for conservatives to start making their own block-lists and blocking leftwinger en masse, so that everyone is shadowbanned according to the "How many users block you?" metric, thus forcing Twitter to abandon it, or just confess they're in the business of blocking conservatives.

They will always try to impose a negative caste system on American citizens, making some high caste and others low caste, and we must insist that there is only one caste and employ every tool at our disposal to frustrate their efforts at castification.

Conservatives have prided themselves on not employing block lists, partly because they've complained of the practice being used against them in the past, but these blocklists are now being used, if Jim Hanson is right, as the basis for shadowbans.

So the way to defeat this practice is just to make sure that Twitter's leftwing favorites appear on as many blocklists as conservatives do, rendering it useless as an allegedly "neutral" arbiter of who is allegedly a low-quality person.

July 27, 2018

Democrat Socialist Rising Red Star Ocasia-Cortez: Enforcing the Border Is "On the Same Spectrum as Ethnic Cleansing"— Open Blogger

Why aren't the media asking other Democrats if they agree with this idea? That is standard media procedure for Republicans whenever one Republican makes a statement that commands less than majority support.

Socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: Trump's zero-tolerance policy on illegal immigration is on the same "spectrum" as "ethnic cleansing." pic.twitter.com/4TEV0qGnxm

Though I'm skeptical of such an eye-popping guess, and I don't think it's a good idea to raise expectations to the point where a huge 4.3% quarterly growth rate winds up looking like "a disappointment."

For years, President Trump has used Twitter as his go-to public relations weapon, mounting a barrage of attacks on celebrities and then political rivals even after advisers warned he could be creating legal problems for himself.

Those concerns now turn out to be well founded. The special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, is scrutinizing tweets and negative statements from the president about Attorney General Jeff Sessions and the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey, according to three people briefed on the matter.

Several of the remarks came as Mr. Trump was also privately pressuring the men  both key witnesses in the inquiry  about the investigation, and Mr. Mueller is examining whether the actions add up to attempts to obstruct the investigation by both intimidating witnesses and pressuring senior law enforcement officials to tamp down the inquiry.

Mr. Mueller wants to question the president about the tweets. His interest in them is the latest addition to a range of presidential actions he is investigating as a possible obstruction case: private interactions with Mr. Comey, Mr. Sessions and other senior administration officials about the Russia inquiry; misleading White House statements; public attacks; and possible pardon offers to potential witnesses.

Superconservative TruCon AllahPrincess is all about it:

Trump getting indicted for obstruction because of random pissy things he tweeted while sitting on the toilet in the morning would be *kisses fingers*